Body and Beauty and Living-Naturally

Just the kind of thing you want to hear before the holidays…chocolate is good for you!!!

The research now prooves it.

Recent research conducted at the Nestle Research Center in Lausanne, Switzerland has shown that  eating dark chocolate may lower levels of stress hormones in people experiencing stress.

Researchers found that eating the equivalent of one average-sized dark chocolate candy bar (1.4 ounces) each day for two weeks reduced levels of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the “fight-or-flight” hormones known as catecholamines in highly stressed people.

This adds to the potential benefits of dark chocolate-supposed to be good for your heart, blood pressure, etc. An article here from 2005 describes the benefits of chocolate for the heart.

The  recent swiss study examined the effects on 30 adults of eating 1.4 ounces (40 grams) of dark chocolate every day  or two weeks on blood (half in the morning and half in the mid-afternoon)  Anxiety levels of the participants were determined at the start of the study, blood and urine samples were also collected and analyzed at the beginning and end of the two-week study.The results showed that eating dark chocolate daily reduced stress hormone levels in those who started with high anxiety levels. Researchers also indicated that dark chocolate appeared to have beneficial effects on the participants’ metabolism and microbial activity in the gut.

So apart from using the dark chocolate in skincare recipes, we can now use eat it guiltfree!!

sources:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr900607v?prevSearch=%255Btitle%253A%2Bchocolate%255D&searchHistoryKey=

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr900607v

http://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-management/news/20091113/dark-chocolate-takes-bite-out-of-stress?ecd=wnl_skin_112509

http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=8702

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